He Found It.  Repeatedly.

The Search for the Genuine: Nonfiction, 1970-2015 by Jim Harrison.  Grove Press.  339 pp.  $28.00.  *****

I was mildly amused by this title for Jim Harrison’s nonfiction.  Harrison has to be the most genuine writer who ever lived.  (What other writer, in the middle of an article about a fishing expedition, would talk about going to a strip club, and the women he saw there, and how many times he fell in love?)  Except in his early poetry, in which he seemed to be finding his voice, everything Harrison wrote—from poetry to novellas to novels to personal narratives to reviews—is instantly recognizable as his work.  What you get in Harrison’s writing is what is passing through his mind at the moment, on whatever subject he takes up, and his mind, and the way he expresses it, is infinitely interesting.  (Toward the end of his life, I felt that he was writing to keep himself alive—an admirable reason—and that his work thinned out.  But until then he never faltered.)

I had read somewhere or other that, in his early life, Harrison made money by writing for magazines like “Sports Illustrated” and “Field & Stream,” and I wondered how he adapted to the style of those places.  The answer (if the pieces in this collection are representative) is that he didn’t.  He wrote his way, and they adapted (by printing exactly what he wrote, I assume.  An editor friend once told me that Harrison was absolutely unwilling to be edited.  Suggesting an edit was like poking an angry pit bull.  It was his way or not at all).

The most memorable title from the past is unfortunately missing from this collection: “Ice Fishing, the Moronic Sport.”

That having been said, I have to admit that my favorite section of this book is the first one, “Dogs in the Manger: On Love, Spirit, and Literature.”  Harrison went on long hunting and fishing expeditions, he sometimes cooked for hours a day, my impression is that he did his writing in long stints, and yet the man was amazingly well read.  I don’t know how he found time for all that.  I’m not sure he would have made it as a regular reviewer: he didn’t suffer fools gladly, and only seemed to write about a book when he liked it, when he really liked it: he was great at praising what was good, and giving us unique reasons why.  He liked all kinds of books, everything from Steinbeck and Thoreau to Pablo Neruda and Charles Bukowski (whom he actually reviewed for the New York Times Book Review.  They couldn’t have picked anyone better).  He’s especially good on the great Peter Matthiessen, a man whose writing he liked and whom he liked personally.

Harrison can verge on name dropping; he not only talks about fishing trips with his old buddy Thomas McGuane (the two men went way back), but speaks of time hanging out with Jack Nicholson and large meals, very large meals, with Orson Welles (I could have stayed for the first course, and the first wine, and walked away fully satisfied).  But Harrison never sounds like A. E. Hotchner, hanging around with celebrities because he wanted the star power to rub off.  I suspect, actually, that it was they who wanted him to hang around.  He sounds like great company.

I wasn’t sure how I’d do with the pieces on hunting, since I have mixed feelings about that sport.  I understand why people want to be out in nature, and be one with things the way a hunter needs to be.  I just don’t understand then wanting to kill the animal (I except people who the game).  But I came to understand Harrison’s love for the sport.  It’s part of his heritage, for one thing.  He likes the whole shebang, getting out in nature, tracking the animal, observing the animal and other animals, interacting with his hunting dogs (there’s a lot here about the dogs).  He seems to eat everything he kills.  He kills animals with respect and gratitude, the way it is said that Native Americans did.

I honestly have no idea what a total newcomer to Harrison’s work would think of this book.  I assume you either love him or can’t stand him (I find it hard to imagine not loving the work of Jim Harrison).  But if you love him, and this is your first title, you’ve got a huge stack of books ahead of you.  He occupies the whole first shelf of my Favorite Writers bookcase.  This book was beautifully compiled, has a great Introduction by Luis Alberto Urrea (any number of writers would have killed to write that intro), and includes photographs with every piece.  Harrison’s Complete Poetry was recently published; I assume someone’s working on a biography.  And there’s always rereading.  The pleasures the man affords never end.